Denver Broncos guest services worker Alexander Manfredy clears snow inside Sports Authority Field at Mile High Sunday January 8, 2012 to ready the stadium for the first round of the AFC playoffs against the Pittsburgh Steelers. HYOUNG CHANG, The Denver Post

If enthusiasm, love of football and civic pride were top criteria for cities to win a bid to host the Super Bowl, Denver could be a top contender every year.

But the Mile High City has some challenges to overcome to be chosen to host the game, which city officials and the Broncos say they will pursue for 2018, 2019 or 2020, as first reported by The Denver Post.

First, there’s the weather. Second, the lodging. And third, the competition.

Every fall, the NFL issues its bid book to cities hoping to land a Super Bowl, featuring baseline requirements that mandate a 70,000-seat stadium, 30,000 hotel rooms within an hour’s drive and an average daily temperature of 50 degrees or warmer.

Some of those things Denver has.

But then there’s the weather.

Super Bowl Sunday in 2018 would be played Feb. 4.

The normal high for that day in Denver is 45 degrees, and the normal low is 17 degrees.

Historical records show the hottest it has been on that day in Denver was 77 degrees in 1890, and the coldest was minus 22 in 1883. Historically, there has been a 26 percent chance of precipitation on Feb. 4.

This past year’s date, however, saw a slow-moving winter storm leave about 16 inches of snow on the ground.

But Broncos coach John Fox doesn’t think the weather would be an issue.

“Look at the weather — it’s almost December here,” Fox said Thursday, when highs reached the 60s. “It’s probably one of the best-kept secrets there is. We’ve got, if not the nicest, one of the nicest stadiums in the league. Denver’s a great town. It’s got great fans. There would be great enthusiasm, I know, if we were fortunate to get it. I think the NFL would be very happy with it.”

Pro Bowl cornerback Champ Bailey agreed that the city would be a great Super Bowl host.

“If you’re going to play it in New York, Denver’s probably better than New York in February. So, yeah, why not?”

Back in 1997, when Broncos owner Pat Bowlen was touting ideas for a new stadium to replace the old Mile High, he imagined building a structure that could accommodate a temporary tentlike roof specifically to draw a Super Bowl here.

“Obviously, we all know, who live here in Colorado, that we can have great weather (on Super Bowl Sunday),” Bowlen told The Denver Post at the time. “The only problem is that I can’t assure them that we’re not going to have 4 feet of snow. … Maybe it makes sense to put a temporary roof on it for a Super Bowl. You’d have to look at the cost to see if it was worthwhile. But all we are talking about is some kind of insurance policy against bad weather on game day.”

That obviously didn’t happen.

Original plans for the stadium considered a retractable roof, which would have added between $66 million and $145 million to the already expensive price tag.

The retractable-roof idea was eliminated to make the deal more palatable to voters, who in 1998 approved the penny-per-$10 sales tax to generate $270 million in revenue to build the 76,125-seat stadium. Bowlen provided about $100 million of his own money for the construction.

The Super Bowl has been played in either warm, Southern climates or in domed stadiums in cold-weather cities.

The 2014 game — in the new MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. — will mark the first outdoor Super Bowl in a cold-weather city, where the average high temperature at that time of year is 38 degrees and the average low is 24.

“Ever since New York was awarded, every city that doesn’t meet those requirements says, ‘Why can’t we get it?’ ” said Daniel Kaplan, staff writer with SportsBusiness Journal who covers the NFL. “Now everyone feels that it is fair game. All that said, the preference of owners is not to have it in cold-weather sites.”

The lure of the biggest game in sports is, of course, a chance to show off and to bring in tons of cash.

An analysis of last season’s Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis showed that an estimated 116,000 visitors descended on the city because of the game. Total gross spending reached $337.2 million in the metropolitan area. Hotels filled up, with occupancy rates topping 99 percent for downtown rooms.

“You have to have enough hotels for people,” Kaplan said. “In Indianapolis, it was a real problem. There was severe price gouging. You had rooms at the La Quinta going for $2,000 a night. You had to go out two hours away from the city to find rooms. People were staying in Chicago and South Bend.”

Recent studies show the Denver area has the required hotel space, with 42,000 rooms from Castle Rock to Boulder, including 8,400 rooms downtown, according to an April report by the Downtown Denver Partnership.

“We found out with the (2008 Democratic National Convention) that we have the hotel space, and we have built more since then,” said former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, who was the convention’s vice-chairman.

The DNC also proved that the city could handle other national special-security events such as the Olympics or a Super Bowl. The convention — over a week in August 2008 at several venues — brought in an estimated 50,000 people to Denver, including 6,000 delegates, 18,000 national and international media, and 26,000 dignitaries, delegate family members and other guests.

Similarly, a Super Bowl is not just about a game but about a week’s worth of entertainment leading up to Sunday, requiring facilities for the NFL Experience, the NFL Tailgate Party, a center for 6,000 media representatives and room for other events.

Denver has the Colorado Convention Center, with ample room for ancillary events. The city has also proved itself by hosting the NBA All-Star Game, World Youth Day and Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game.

But will the 32 NFL owners have the appetite for another “cold-weather city” four years after New Jersey?

“Owners will look at each bid individually and compare and contrast,” said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy. “And you could be competing against other cities as well that may have not had a Super Bowl.”

Some of those cities are building or considering new stadiums with hopes of luring the Super Bowl, including Minneapolis and Atlanta. Indianapolis wants to try again for 2018, and New Orleans would like the game to come to the Big Easy to coincide with the city’s 300th anniversary.

“You would think San Francisco, Houston, South Florida would be in the mix if they don’t get one before,” McCarthy said. “And Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he wants to bring the game there.”

The next step would happen in about a year, when the NFL issues its bid book. Denver will have about six months to make its argument. Owners are expected to make the decision for the 2018 Super Bowl in May 2014.

“This is something that everyone could get behind, Denver and the entire state,” Webb said. “… We can do it.”

Jeremy P. Meyer was a reporter and editorial writer with The Denver Post until 2016. He worked at a variety of weeklies in Washington state before going to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin as sports writer and then copy editor. He moved to the Yakima Herald-Republic as a feature writer, then to The Gazette in Colorado Springs as news reporter before landing at The Post. He covered Aurora, the environment, K-12 education, Denver city hall and eventually moved to the editorial page as a writer and columnist.

More in News

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Saturday there was “incontrovertible” evidence of a Russian plot to disrupt the 2016 U.S. election, a blunt statement that shows how significantly the new criminal charges leveled by an American investigator have upended the political debate over his inquiry.

The University of Colorado leadership is grappling with how to address a nationwide nosedive in the favorability of higher education — particularly, among conservatives — as CU’s own representatives and decision-makers disagree on what’s behind the downturn.